Ranking Methods in Soccer

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the most common ranking methods in soccer. We discuss point‐winning systems, least squares methods, maximum likelihood‐based methods, and Elo ratings.

What is the optimal schedule for the UEFA Champions League groups?

“…To that end, it is necessary to connect the teams playing in the tournament studied to the teams whose performance is already known. It is achieved by rating the teams, namely, by assigning a value to each team to measure its strength (Van Eetvelde and Ley, 2019). This approach allows the identification of the teams by their ratings instead of their names.…”

“…In football, the number of goals scored is usually described by Poisson distribution (Maher, 1982;Van Eetvelde and Ley, 2019). Dagaev and Rudyak (2019) In order to determine the outcome of the match, parameters 𝜆 𝐻,𝐴 and 𝜆 𝐴,𝐻 need to be estimated.…”

UEFA against the champions? An evaluation of the recent reform of the Champions League qualification

“…Second, their strengths are estimated by the club Elo ratings, available at http://clubelo.com/. 4 A team's Elo rating is based on its past results such that the same result against a stronger opponent has more value and the influence of a game decreases after new games are played (Van Eetvelde and Ley, 2019). While there exists no single nor any official Elo rating for football clubs, Elo-inspired methods seem to outperform other measures with respect to prediction power (Lasek et al, 2013).…”

How to avoid uncompetitive games? The importance of tie-breaking rules

“…In a given match, the numbers of goals scored by the two teams need to be specified. For this purpose, the traditional Poisson model is used (Maher, 1982;Ley et al, 2019;Van Eetvelde and Ley, 2019). In particular, the probability that team 𝑖 scores 𝑘 goals against team 𝑗 is…”